Sixth form interview questions

The task of exploring “Asianness” in cinema falls on a variety of shoulders. In America, “Asian” usually means you’re Chinese or Japanese, or occasionally Korean, regardless of where in East Asia you’re from. In the UK, it means you’re Indian or Pakistani. In reality, it’s a much wider umbrella, yet at the same time, a reductive pigeon-hole. Such is the burden of post-colonial identity, the idea that even as filmmakers, one’s outlook as an immigrant — or as the child or grandchild of immigrants — must, at once, adhere to certain ideas of what constitutes “Asian” while simultaneously transcending them. “You are not Asian, you are Other,” I remember being told as a teen in Mumbai, India, Asia, while filling out an SAT form. At the time I was called this thing, this “Other” — a mere category on paper that now feels insidious — I hadn’t even made my way to America to … [Read more...] about The year’s 20 best films born from the Asian diaspora

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the new film from No Country for Old Men filmmakers Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, drew every imaginable response during its U.S. premiere at the 56th New York Film Festival earlier this month. Originally conceived as a six-part Netflix series — it will still premiere on the platform on Nov. 16 — the film has been trimmed to a manageable feature-length work while retaining its chaptered structure, which elicited everything from roaring laughter to slack-jawed silence. A book called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Other Tales of the American Frontier provides the framing device, its pages turning between each of the film’s six stories. The book also serves as a reminder: What we’re about to witness is a folkloric retrospective on the past, viewed in some future moment, with requisite awareness — or lack thereof. Buster Scruggs isn’t just a Coen brothers Western. It’s a Coen brothers film about Westerns and, in many … [Read more...] about The Coen brothers’ new Western grapples with the genre’s history — and their own career

It’s perhaps fitting that a game with the tagline “nothing is true; everything is permitted” emerged from creative director Patrice Désilets bending the rules. Assassin’s Creed began life as a Prince of Persia game, expanded and reimagined for a new generation of consoles. You might say it even ended up feeling like one, though Désilets’ creative interpretation of Ubisoft’s mandate layered on many additional challenges for the team at Ubisoft Montreal. Today, Assassin’s is one of the biggest entertainment franchises in the world, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but back then Assassin’s Creed was something new. Its labyrinthine fiction twisted the modern day with the past, offering a science fiction tale of genetic memory and end-of-the-world conspiracies intertwined with another story of a master assassin coming to realize his own ignorance. Its world was made for unprecedented freedom — your character being able to … [Read more...] about Assassin’s Creed: An oral history

This is Brendan, broadcasting live from rumour world, where everything is made of a nebulous candy floss-like substance. The locals call it “hope.” Amid this sticky cloud, a figure has formed. It’s Geralt of Rivia, hero of popular Gwent spin-off, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The monster-hunting swordsman will “make an appearance” in another game later this year, according to CD Projekt Red community lead Marcin Momot. Some have asserted that he’ll be a guest character in upcoming fighting game Soul Calibur VI. Which makes sense given the close business ties between the Polish studio and Japanese publisher Namco Bandai. It isn’t confirmed. But it does raise the question: who else deserves a place on the stage of history? I asked the RPS treehouse who they’d like to see. Here’s the list we all settled on. Capra Demon from Dark Souls Weapon: Two large swords, two large dogs Super-duper finishing move: Pushes you into an alley the size of … [Read more...] about Geralt may appear in Soul Calibur VI but here are the characters we really want